Waking Nightmares
by NthClockmaker
Summary: She wishes it was just bad dreams that made him wake her. 5 year old Stein goes to his mother's room at night for comfort. Some gore. Stein slightly OOC, assume that his personality changed in the last 25 years.


Waking Nightmares

**A/N: My first fan fiction, so feedback is really appreciated. Rated teen, and has no explicit violence, but tell me if you think I should change the rating. There's kind of a lot of blood…**

**In most of the fan fiction you read about Stein as a kid, he's severely abused and/or bullied, but I don't really get that impression from the series. I wondered what it would be like for normal people to be raising someone like Stein, which is what this fic is about. **

Warning: Blood, some gore, implied violence and mentions of suicide.

Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater or Franken Stein. Adalia Stein is mine, but you're welcome to her.

She has been sleeping fitfully for nights, or weeks, or months, or since Franken was born (it's so hard to remember now) but tonight, after hours of tossing and turning, Adalia finally feels comfortable between the thin white sheets. Exhaustion lies so heavily upon her that it's painful, and she's just beginning to drift off when she feels a tug on the covers. She groans inwardly and curls up tighter, ignoring it. There's another, harder tug, accompanied by an unsure whisper.

"Mommy?"

She does not move as she answers. "What is it, Franken?" Her voice sounds more exasperated and abrasive than she intends it to, and she feels her son flinch. She turns her head and half opens her eyes, struggling to see in the dim light. Franken is fidgeting, shifting his weight back and forth. His arms and hands are soaked in blood, just beginning to dry. It must be fresh, no more than 30 minutes old, she thinks, and then feels sick at the fact that she's gotten so used to this that she can tell how old bloodstains are by their appearance. Now that she sees it, she can smell the metallic tang in the air, and fights back the bile rising in her throat. Franken is rubbing his arms, as though he can wipe them clean when his hands are even dirtier. There are pieces of flesh stuck under his fingernails, and Adalia shudders in revulsion. Franken keeps going to wipe his hands on his shirt, but then catching himself and going back to rubbing. Not that it would matter if he did use his shirt; it's already soaked in red. Adalia will have to buy him a new one tomorrow. For a moment, she thinks about how on any other child this would be a stain from berry juice, and the pieces of skin clinging to him would be pulp from messily devoured fruit.

"Mommy?" Franken whispers again, his body beginning to shake while his face remains calm. "I did something bad…"

It's a plea, but Adalia isn't sure what for, and a part of her is angry with the boy for pleading in the first place. Does he really have a right to ask for anything, after all he's put her through? Adalia sighs and closes her eyes again.

"Why?" she asks, her voice mumbled with sleep.

"I don't know…" With her eyes closed, she can mistake the boy for a desperate, confused child. "Everyone was all around me, talking, and they were saying nice things but in a mean way, and I felt funny, so I tried to leave, but they wouldn't let me, so I tried those exercises the doctor made me practice, but they weren't working, and everyone was crowding in on me and I got overwhelmed and my thoughts were all twisted and jumbled up and it just-"

"No." She cut him off. "Why are you telling me this?"

"M-mommy?" Franken stops fidgeting abruptly, eyes glassy with shock.

"Mommy's very tired, sweetie. If you need to talk to someone, then go talk to daddy." Franken begins fidgeting again. When he's uncomfortable, he doesn't blush. Instead his face drains of what little colour it has. Adalia imagines her son's face is ashen.

"B-but…" His voice is trembling with fear, probably of her. It's unusual that she frightens him. Usually it's the other way around. "Daddy… daddy is…" He trails off, unsure.

"Daddy's in the urn on the side table in the living room. You can talk to him there. He won't talk back, but it will have to do for now."

There is silence for a few minutes. Adalia waits without impatience or remorse. She loves her son. She does. But she loved her husband too, and if Franken was normal, or at least not like this, at least someone who had never gouged out chunks of living creatures' organs with his bare hands, then she would never have found her husband with a note at his feet and a noose around his neck. She knows it isn't Franken's fault that he's like this, but she can't help the disgust that comes when she sees her child, her five year old child, playing with the guts of some piece of road kill.

"…Okay." The bed shifts slightly as Franken's weight disappears, and there is the sound of footsteps padding across the floor.

When she hears the door creak open, Adalia remembers something and calls after him. "Wait!"

The footsteps pause. Adalia blearily opens her eyes to see her son watching her from across the room. "Before you do anything else, throw your shirt in the garbage and wash yourself up. You can get diseases from blood."

For a moment, she thinks the boy looks disappointed. She almost expects him to say something, at least something about how she doesn't need to tell _him_ about disease, or anything about biology. But he just nods and pads out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He'll have left bloodstains on the doorknob. Adalia will have to clean again. And she should probably make another appointment with the psychologist. She spends more on cleaning supplies than on food, more on psychologists than bills, more on new clothes to replaced stained and torn ones than she spent on her own clothes in 15 years of living alone.

At times like these, she wonders if the love she feels for her son is nothing more than shame at not being able to fix Franken, or to raise him normally like all other parents can with all other children, or if she really does love him despite everything, and that's why she feels so guilty about not being able to help him.

She wonders which is worse.

She sighs, rolling over. This will be another sleepless night.


End file.
